


Chuck Vs. the Winter Soldier

by Jaune_Chat



Category: Chuck (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 09:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11460396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: Chuck's latest Intersect download contains all the information from SHIELD and HYDRA that was dumped on the Internet.  Sometimes that can make some conflicting information about certain escaped super-soldiers really interesting...





	Chuck Vs. the Winter Soldier

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evil_dime (EvilDime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilDime/gifts).



> Wrote this for Evil Dime for fandomtrumpshate.
> 
> Obviously there's some timeline shenanigans here. This is set vaguely S3 for Chuck, but with the actual dates advanced so it falls soon after Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Chuck lugged the breakroom trash out, trying to hold it as far as he could from himself so as to not get any of the mystery fluid™ that was in the bag on him. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a Nerd Herder’s job to take out the trash. Technically, Big Mike slid things like that under the dreaded “other duties as assigned” part of everyone’s job descriptions.

Also he’d lost a bet with Lester.

But that was fine. No big deal. Everyone had to take the trash out sometimes. Things like that had become a little bit more bearable since he’d become an irreplaceable government intelligence asset.

_I am a spy. I am a bad-ass secret agent that knows kung-fu, at least some of the time. I am totally confident in my life, I am-_

Something rattled behind the dumpster as Chuck tossed the garbage in.

He yelped (not shrieked), leapt back, and flailed his arms to fend off whatever-it-was because of course the Intersect wasn’t going to kick in his random self-defense skills to help him fend off a dog. Or a guy looking through what he thought was the yogurt shop’s dumpster. Or a couple of guys wandering around in a haze of smoke, looking for munchies. 

That had happened once, and it had taken Chuck an hour to explain he was far more likely to have access to silicon chips than potato chips. They’d eventually wandered away to the gas station in the next parking lot, leaving Chuck smelling like reefer. Casey had made him pee in a cup for a week.

Chuck squinted through the pools of shadow left by the security lights, and really, really hoped it was a coyote or a racoon or something and not, say, another enemy agent or something equally likely to ruin his day. Casey was on Chuck-watch tonight, and Chuck didn’t want to have to help him move a body or something equally traumatizing.

But nothing leapt out to scare him or grab him or start yammering about Doritos, and Chuck relaxed long enough to slap the lid back down with more than the necessary amount of zeal.

Something actually moved behind the dumpster, too big to be a dog or coyote, and _not_ some figment of his over-active imagination. Chuck did a leap backwards as far as his legs would take him. The figure moved, uncurling from a slouch to reveal a man with long, dirty brown hair, a complete unfamiliarity with a razor, tall and dangerous-looking with blue-gray eyes glaring at Chuck from underneath a ratty baseball cap. The man put his left hand out to steady himself to stand, and it _clinked_ on the side of the dumpster, metal-on-metal. His fingers, his whole hand and wrist, and presumably more was all articulated plates of shiny metal. As he looked up, the man’s face was illuminated by the security lights over the back door, and Chuck felt the eye-crossing, brain-scrambling tingle of a flash as the Intersect poured not just one, but _two_ sets of conflicting data into his consciousness.

Newpaper articles about assassinations going back decades, blurry pictures of a man with a sniper rifle on a roof, hints of the metal arm, then a barrage of new information from the attacks in D.C., with full-color pictures of the Winter Soldier on more than one rampage. Those contrasted with old World War II photos and reels of a man with the Winter Soldier’s face, fighting alongside Captain America against the forces of HYDRA. One Sergeant Bucky Barnes, Howling Commando of the 107th, U.S. Army, former POW, American hero, KIA over seventy years ago. (And why the hell did the Intersect have 70-year-old data on a dead man? Probably because Captain America had been a fugitive for a while and some data-entry person had just shoved the man’s whole file in the latest Intersect download just to be thorough, heedless of the consequences. Whoever did that, Chuck suddenly hated them.)

Both sets of data crashed against Chuck’s cortex in a flash of migraine-inducing proportions. He babbled something that may or may not have been intelligible. His hindbrain wisely said, _Yeah, that’s it, I’m out,_ and Chuck mercifully lost consciousness.

\---

He woke up staring at a ceiling covered with track lighting. _Huh. Since when does Morgan do rewiring?_ his mind commented idly. Then he realized that he wasn’t in his apartment. On a couch, yes. But the one in the media demo room at Buy More.

In the good news column, he probably wasn’t dead.

Something moved slightly, and Chuck went from lying down to bolt upright so fast his head spun in protest. Sitting on the very edge of the hardest and most uncomfortable chair in the room was the current cause of his post-flash headache, staring at him with a thousand-yard-stare of impending doom.

Or utter boredom. One of the two.

“Um… Hi?”

No reaction. Chuck wondered why Casey hadn’t broken down the door yet. Hadn’t he seen Chuck getting abducted by a brainwashed assassin dead man? Had Casey been delayed? Had Sarah switched nights with him? Hadn’t _she_ seen anything? He went to hit his panic button, only to realize that it was being held in the palm of a metal murder arm.

So, that wasn’t good.

“You’re Sergeant Barnes, right?” he asked, hoping that his current state of aliveness and the fact that he wasn’t in the trunk of a car meant that he wasn’t being abducted by HYDRA or the Ring or the Fulcrum or something. There were so many bad-hat organizations Chuck was going to have to start keeping a list.

At the sound of his name, Barnes’ eyes widened. “I thought that’s what you said,” he murmured. Chuck was momentarily confused, then remembered he’d been babbling a bit before his brain had shut down in self-preservation. He’d better mention that to Sarah, because babbling Intersect information while he flashed was going to get him in more trouble than usual.

If he, say, survived this encounter intact, that is.

“Uh, yeah. So… not dead in 1945. Cool. You-.” The Intersect chose that moment to give him another little mini-flash of information, highlighting a whole bunch of HYDRA files about the creation of the Winter Soldier. Chuck lunged for the trash can and brought up dinner, lunch, midmorning snack, breakfast, and a midnight burrito. “I think you had a way worse day… life… than me right now,” he managed, after he was certain his stomach was done rebelling after the mental sewer swim he’d been forced to do. He’d known those HYDRA guys were bad news, but what they’d done to this poor guy was enough to want Chuck to dip his brain in bleach.

“How?” Barnes demanded, and switched the panic button to his normal hand, letting his metal left arm clench and whine with a deadly, Terminator-like servo noise. “How do you know?”

“I have a computer in my brain, sort of. Gives me info on whatever I see that’s also in the files. And you’re in there twice.” Chuck’s brain raced, and he flicked his eyes up the cameras Casey and Sarah had installed. Barnes followed his gaze and shook his head.

“Looped footage. No one’s watching you. Who put the computer in your brain?”

“A friend. Sort of. And the government. Sort of. Um, getting back to now, what are you doing in Burbank?”

Barnes stared at him, looking more astonished than anything else. “I have no damn idea.” And looked down at the carpet, losing his Stare of Doom for something more like a lost puppy.

Chuck sighed and leaned his head back on the sofa. “That makes two of us, pal.”

Barnes made a noise almost like he was choking, and Chuck looked up to see his shoulders shaking. Another little snort, and Chuck realized that Barnes wasn’t scoffing or dying, but was _laughing_. Chuck was startled into giggling out of sheer nerves.

What happened next was a giggle-loop of infinite proportions.

Chuck only managed to get ahold of himself when his stomach couldn’t take it anymore, wiping his eyes and trying to slow his breathing as Barnes pushed Chuck’s panic button back to him. “Here. Are you going to hit that?”

“Um… no?” Nothing had really happened yet; this was by far the easier time Chuck had had being kidnapped. Besides, Chuck knew that if he turned the ex-Winter Soldier over to the CIA, only bad things would happen. General Beckman was a pretty decent person, but Chuck wasn’t so naïve to think that they’d take Barnes as anything other than an asset, at the very, very best. And at worst? Chuck _really_ didn’t want to think about it.

“Yeah… you’re not a very good liar. I should go. Sorry for… Give me an hour’s head-start, that’s all I ask.”

“Go where?”

Barnes stood up, but froze. “Anywhere. Nowhere. I-. I have trouble remembering things sometimes. I need to… I’m getting better. But I can’t be around… people. Not until I know I’m safe. I can’t let HYDRA or anyone else get me back.”

Barnes didn’t seem actively murderous, just weary and wary. Chuck had had his brain co-opted by the government, so he could relate a little, but Barnes had had his body, mind, will, and lifespan controlled by Nazi assholes for decades. How could Chuck even help the guy?

The Intersect actually obliged, giving him a mini-flash reminder of the HYDRA “How to Abuse your Brainwashed POW” guidebook. That did nothing for his tender stomach, but he seized on the relevant information fast.

“Hey, I’ve got some stuff in here that could help you. I can tell you some of your codewords and overrides? Resets?” Chuck hated it when the Intersect gave him stuff in other languages. Even with the skills upgrade, he was always afraid he was going to mangle the pronunciation. Chuck grabbed a brochure and wrote them down, because his flash had intimated that Barnes wouldn’t like it if he said them out loud. Or rather that Chuck would find himself with a two-hundred-pound killer cyborg assassin asking for a target and that was just _no_.

Barnes’ whole body went tense, and Chuck froze because right at that second Barnes was looking dangerously close to some of the D.C. rampage footage.

“I’m writing these down in English,” Chuck said, trying not to stutter with nerves. “Because you might want to know them pleasedon’tkillme!”

Barnes clenched both of his arms, the metal one sounding like the Terminator winding up for the kill.

“Why?” Barnes growled.

“So you can have them? I think there are some that are override codes.” Chuck bracketed the bottom part of the list. “It doesn’t work on you if you see them, right?”

“No.” His voice was flat, dead. “Voice, language, timing, cadence, that was part of them. The codes were easier to keep under wraps if they were ears only for activation. They didn’t want someone putting the words on a billboard and then stealing me.”

“Eight kinds of suck,” Chuck said sincerely. Barnes’ lips twitched, almost like he was suppressing a smile, and he lost the dead look in his eyes. “So, ok, what about these?”

Barnes put his hand on the home stereo brochure and turned it towards him, staring at the words intently. He underlined a few with his finger, suddenly looking relieved. “These stop me! They’re the abort codes for missions. I can-.”

“Record them, then play them back if you need to!” Chuck said.

Chuck suddenly found himself in a super-strong hug, breathing sort of impossible, and gasped out a desperate, “You’re welcome.”

Barnes backed off before Chuck could pass out. “I should… go.”

“Hey, wait, um… hold on just one second!” Chuck dashed out into the store and dug into the return bins, because he knew the guys there usually didn’t log things in fast enough and someone had been making fun of something just today… _ah ha!_ He flew back into the media demo room and thrust an opened package with a digital recorder/player at him. “For the road.”

“…thank you,” Barnes said, staring at the little recorder with unblinking eyes. Chuck was suddenly aware of how well, there was no way around this, how whiffy Barnes was. Between the clothes and unshaven face and lank hair, it was clear the guy hadn’t had had a chance to relax since he’d been on the run.

“Hey, um, I know you’re on the lam and all, totally unfair, you didn’t sign up for the evil squid squad-.”

Barnes snorted at that.

“But you could hang out here for a bit, use the locker room, I could get you some food, some money?”

“I couldn’t exactly be hired,” Barnes said, looking at him as if he were crazy. And it was a crazy idea. A bonkers idea. Chuck had just been thinking having him crash the night, but why not? Barnes was able to stay out of the way of some worldwide evil organization for the past year, so he could keep out of Casey and Sarah’s way for a few days.

“No offense, but Mickey Mouse could be on the payroll here. Jeff once put Lester’s pet rock on the roster for two months as a temp.” 

That brought Barnes up short.

“He gave the money back in our employee charity drive. Anyway! It was during a management change. But Big Mike is out on vacation for two weeks as of today. Look, I’ve got a government stipend I hardly ever use because I almost never leave Burbank. I can get you some clothes and stuff. You can get a break, and then… do your thing.”

“I’ve been trying to keep away from people until I can remember- until I’m safe.” Barnes looked torn, then looked down at the brochure in his hand. “Maybe for a week.”

Chuck grinned and tried a high-five. Barnes just look at him bleakly.

“Why help me?”

Chuck couldn’t think of an answer to convince him, so gestured at him to come back to the stockroom. They had the spare employee shirts back there, but more importantly there was a corkboard with pictures on it from employee events. He pointed to one from about three years ago, a costume party for Buy More where both Awesome and Ellie had attended. Morgan had taken a picture of all three of them: Ellie as Peggy Carter, Awesome in his frighteningly well-fitted Captain America suit, and Chuck in his Sargent James Buchannan Barnes uniform.

“You’re my favorite Howling Commando,” Chuck said simply. 

Barnes took the stockboy shirt without another word, and turned away quickly to lose himself in the towers of shelves. 

\---

Sergeant Barnes (“Call me Bucky, I’m trying to get used to my name again”), _Bucky_ , might have been a soldier, a hero, and inadvertently a living weapon, but he was also a really, really good stocker. Chuck hadn’t expected him to have to _do_ anything; he was just happy to give the guy a waystation on the road to recovery.

But Bucky had apparently gotten bored, because when Morgan went to go find the new shipment, instead of it being in its usual pile of shrink-wrapped randomness, locked up in the center cage so everyone could claim that they “didn’t have the keys,” and instead found it neatly logged in, catalogued, and shelved. With all the packing materials put in their respective recycling bins.

Morgan brought out the movies he had been after in a small stack of shock, and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out who’d coerced who into doing such a timely and accurate job.

Chuck had taken an early lunch break and slipped back to the stockroom, only to find Bucky prowling around the place, straightening something here, organizing something else there.

“Sarge- er, Bucky, um… you don’t have to do that, you know,” Chuck said. 

Bucky kept at it, snatching a subwoofer speaker from where it had been shoved in with some TVs, and scaling the towering shelves like he was on the final level of Donkey Kong to put it in its place. 

“I mean, unless I guess you want to. We have a fork truck, if you want…” Chuck said, his voice getting smaller and smaller as Bucky leapt across the aisle like a lemur, grabbed a lone case of blank CDs from a nearly-empty pallet, and slinging them unerringly down to the correct shelf, missing Chuck’s head by six inches. Chuck yipped, and backed away. Fast.

“Surprised you guys are still in business,” Bucky said, raising an eyebrow.

\--

Four days later, walking across the parking lot, Chuck clutched his keys as a flash hit, a dozen bits of information about the casually-dressed group of slightly older, muscular bros walking to the front doors vying for supremacy in his brain. He’d started to get a sense of _which_ download iteration information was coming from, and judging from the steel-gray color that had been in some of the logos, this flash was from the Shieldra dump. These guys were ex-SHIELD, current HYDRA, part of the black-ops strike teams who Chuck has last seen on TV pointing guns at Captain America’s head. The flash had given him names and histories of the four guys here now, all of which was several kinds of awful. All of these guys had “run support for the Asset,” which was a bloodless way of saying they’d helped a brainwashed assassin kill people because their bosses said so. Had they found out Bucky was here? Or were they with the Ring or any of their allies? Or maybe they were just buying cell phones for nefarious mercenary purposes. 

Chuck hoped it was one of the last two. Those he could ask for the CIA’s help without blowing Bucky’s cover. The first would be a terrible mess. Chuck reversed course and went back to the employee entrance. He barely had his ID on the door scanner when a metal murder arm snaked out and yanked him inside.

“Did they follow you?” Bucky demanded.

“Um, hi, and no?”

“Get your team,” he said shortly.

“Casey and Sarah don’t know-.”

“And they won’t know about me, if I’m careful. Those guys from STRIKE, they’re on your bad list, right, computer-head?” 

Chuck nodded faintly.

“They’re targets, then. Take them down.”

Bucky looked like he was in an irritated mood. Chuck pulled out his phone. By the time the line had connected, Bucky had vanished into Buy More.

“Chuck, what’s going on?” Sarah said, sounding like she was very much appreciating the break in routine from the yogurt shop.

“Members of HYDRA are shopping at Buy More?”

Chuck could nearly hear her snap to attention. “Go check their location; I’ll let Casey know and he’ll get in contact with you very soon. Let’s work on isolating them.”

Chuck took a deep breath, put a smile on, and walked onto the shop floor, heading towards the Nerd Herder booth. Lester was in deep conversation with one Jack Rollins (information helpfully supplied by the Intersect) about some feature on his iPhone while the rest of his STRIKE brethren hovered and menaced just by breathing. Chuck managed not to jump when Casey clamped a hand on his shoulder.

How exactly Bucky had managed to keep out of Casey’s way when they were both working at Buy More, Chuck wasn’t _precisely_ sure, but he was certain it had to do with Bucky’s ability to jump around on the shelves. Also those decades being a ghost assassin meant he was even better at Casey and Sarah when it came to being invisible.

(For all Chuck knew, Bucky actually _could_ become invisible. Ever since aliens had attacked New York and the Avengers defended it, Chuck wouldn’t put that kind of stuff in the impossible column anymore. Luckily no supervillain had gotten to Burbank yet.)

“Bartowski,” Casey said. Well, growled. “We’re going to get these guys into the stockroom. Sarah’s laying a trap for them. You tell them you have the new security package in the back, and get them to come with you. Go to the back wall, and hit the deck when you see Sarah.” Chuck knew better than to flinch when Casey quickly flipped up the back of his shirt and shoved a Glock into his waistband. “Go.”

Casey vanished into the appliance department as Chuck found his Buy More Smile ™, plastered it on his face, and went to go try to sell some phones to some profession killers in a death cult who desired world domination. 

\--

It turned out that members of HYDRA liked a back room deal as much as the next entitled customer. “Yeah, just back this way, we got them in just this morning,” Chuck was saying. Or babbling. And definitely louder than necessary, because while Casey and Sarah knew what the plan was, Bucky didn’t, and Chuck didn’t want to count on Bucky not wanting to get in on thrashing these guys. Chuck turned the corner to see Casey standing where the phones were locked up. 

Casey tried his best customer smile, but it froze somewhere in the middle when the third guy in the squad (Westfahl, Chuck thought his name was) said, “John? John _Casey?_ ”

Oh, hell.

Rollins and the other two had their guns out as fast as Casey did, about a half second before Sarah popped up behind a pallet of microwaves and fired suppressed tranq darts into the slowest-moving bad guy. He dropped like a rock as the other HYDRA guys scattered. 

“Chuck, go east, cut him off before he gets to the door!” Sarah called out, and took off after her own bad guy. East was good, east was very good, because that was Bucky’s section. Chuck ran after the guy, long legs letting him actually catch up. The Intersect flashed very briefly, _finally_ kicking in some badassery and letting Chuck kick the guy with enough precision to send him skidding to the floor in front of the door. There were a few thuds and bangs from the other rows, and Chuck was about to double back to go help Sarah when the door to the back alley opened in front of him. Four more of the evil squid-squad were forcing their way through, the Intersect dropping some names and horrifying history of human atrocities as they raised their guns. Chuck was bringing up his own with flash-assisted skill, still too slow-!

A blur of Buy More green and flashing metal landed in front of him like a thunderbolt. Bucky raised his metal arm, bullets pinging off of them as he took three strides and started tossing guys around like they were rolls of toilet paper, festooning the shelves with black-clad commandos delivered with a fist of vengeance. Chuck remembered to punch the one on the floor when he tried to get up, but mostly just watched and tried not to let his jaw drop too much.

Bucky finished, breathed in and out a few times, then turned to look at Chuck, face like stone. Chuck gave him a grinning thumbs-up. “That was… _awesome!_ ” he said, trying to keep his voice down. The stone cracked, and Bucky smiled before suddenly bounding back up into the shelves again and out of sight.

Sarah and Casey came around the corner to see Chuck standing over one fallen HYDRA goon, with four more strewn all around him like confetti.

“What the _hell_ , Bartowski?” Casey demanded.

\--

“…so I guess that was like Krav Maga or Gymkata or something. Maybe a combo? I was getting a _lot_ of flashes fighting those guys. I guess the Intersect really goes into overdrive when it has to,” Chuck was saying to General Beckham. She peered at him, then looked over at Casey and Sarah.

“We have eight members of HYDRA for the CIA to squeeze, and Bartowski seems fine,” was the sum total of her assessment. The containment cells were full, so Casey was happy. He seemed disturbingly happy to interrogate the guy who knew his name. Probably they’d tried to kill each other at least once before.

“Good work, Bartowski. Keep your eyes open for any more of them. I’d hate to think HYDRA was trying to set up in Burbank.” She discommed, and Chuck remembered not to sigh in relief. Or giggle. Or mention the super-soldier assist.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Sarah said, giving his hand a squeeze. “We threw that plan together pretty last-minute.”

Chuck smiled. “Well, hey, at least it worked. Um, look, I’ve gotta go make sure all the bullet casings are out of the stockroom, so catch you later?”

“Definitely.” She gave him a quick kiss before he left, and he pulled her into another before he had to go.

\--

“Hang on to that.”

“GAH!” Chuck nearly leapt out of his skin when Bucky dropped down from the shelves without a sound. After getting his heart to start again, he realized something. “And how the hell were you spying on us in the Castle?!”

“Casey’s spy post. Glad to see your handlers are actually decent human beings. And more.”

“Oh.” And _oh_. Yeah, Bucky would understandably want to be sure another government asset wasn’t being taken advantage of. Or being brainwashed and used as a killing machine. “Thanks for helping me.” 

“I would have done that for free.” The tone of voice also said, _I would have broken some skulls if that wouldn’t have been too hard to explain._

“Um…”

“Look, it’s probably time for me to go,” Bucky said. He looked a hell of a lot better than he had. Clean. No wild-man beard. Clothes that didn’t look like they could stand on their own. And an expression that didn’t say either _murder is all I know_ or _I am lost in my own mind, please send help._ “I’m going to get out of the country. I know some places they’re less likely to be. Better places for me to hide until I get,” he waggled his home audio brochure/control word list, “ _this_ squared away somehow. Thanks, Chuck.”

Chuck took him back to the lockers to give Bucky some clean clothes that weren’t Buy More shirts, along with a fat envelope. He really rarely even used his government stipend; he was always too busy. There was enough there to get him across the pond and then some. “For, you know, whatever you need.”

Bucky was one of those practical guys who considered polite protests a waste of time. He just changed shirts and put the money in a pocket, putting the rest of the clothes in a backpack, then settling a (much newer, cleaner) baseball hat on his head. “See you around.” He turned to go, then reluctantly turned back. “I’m still sorting out a lot of stuff, and I don’t even know if this’ll ever happen without someone getting into trouble, but if you see Steve Rogers, tell him I’m all right, and I’ll come back when I’ve got a handle on things. I think you’re a lot more likely to see him before I will.”

Bucky was out the door before Chuck could even answer. He stared at the door for a minute, toed at a bullet fragment before nudging it under a shelf to deal with tomorrow, and made a call.

“Hey, Sarah. You want to go out for dinner tonight?” Chuck was waiting on her answer, when he looked at the crumpled Buy More shirt on the floor and added, “And do you want to go to New York sometime?”


End file.
